🇹🇩 The cattle breeds of Chad

Cattle in Chad are animals of the middle belt. In the Sahel, the semi-dry grasslands south of the Sahara, herders keep large herds for commercial sale, while southern farming families raise a few oxen to plough their fields. Further north, the desert supports camels rather than cattle.

• The Sahel is Chad's cattle heartland, with large herds kept for commercial sale.
• Southern families sometimes keep oxen to plough their fields.
• Rainfall of 350 to 800 mm a year makes the Sahel fine grazing country.
• The Saharan north has few cattle; camels dominate its herds instead.
• About 80% of Chad's labour force works in agriculture.

Cattle in Chad

Cattle hold a modest but useful place in Chad's farming, which is largely subsistence and built on grains such as sorghum and millet. The country falls into three farming zones, and cattle fit each differently. In the southern savanna, where the nation's best cropland lies, settled families raise goats and chickens and, in some cases, oxen: castrated male cattle trained to pull ploughs. The central Sahel, a semi-dry belt of grassland, is the true cattle country. Herding there centres on large herds kept for commercial sale, and the same villages keep goats, sheep, donkeys and some horses. In the Saharan north the rain is too slight for cattle, and camels carry the herding ways of nomadic peoples instead.

Regions and communities

Each zone shapes cattle keeping in its own way. The East Sudanian savanna in the south holds Chad's most fertile fields; there, oxen plough for settled farming communities, and family livestock leans towards goats and chickens rather than cattle. The central Sahel is the heartland: rainfall of 350 to 800 millimetres a year makes its ground fine grazing, and herds there are large and raised for sale. The Saharan north, roughly half the country, takes under 350 millimetres of rain and is thinly peopled by nomads who move with their animals; camels dominate and cattle are few. The Chari and Logone rivers, rising partly in neighbouring lands, tie the south and centre together.

Today

Agriculture carries Chad's working life: about 80% of the labour force was employed in the sector in 2020, and it accounted for 52.3% of GDP in 2017. Cattle herding for commercial sale is one of its activities in the Sahel, beside subsistence cropping. Reliable farm statistics are scarce, and survey work in the Sahel was first held back and then stopped by unrest running from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s; drought struck in 1984 and 1985. Food production nonetheless recovered to self-sufficiency in 1985-87.